Not Over Yet
by Picaro
Summary: AU,Envy&AlSet after Episode 51. After a failed attempt of alchemy, Alphonse gets sick and shares part of his story with the him treatening doctor. But is he really what he seems?


**Disclaimer**: Obviously, I have no rights on Hagaren.

**Others** I got the idea for this one after reading some of the comments about the series ending on some FMA forms. I myself only know the translated mangas. Sorry if the characters seem OOC, I'm working with manga-knowlegde only.

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**- - -Not Over Yet- - -**

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_...Maybe trying to use alchemy on the icy surface of a frozen river really hadn't been such a brilliant idea… Especially if one didn't know how thick the ice one's standing at, exactly was._

_How is it said; One never ceases learning._

_Alphonse Elric learned an awful lot concerning ice-cold water that day._

_Thank god there was a young doctor there to witness him breaking in._

_Isn't it strange how convenient things sometimes are?_

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„Ah, you're still awake?" The voice was laced with an underlying stern concerned tone, despite it's reprimanding words.

The shady-blond-haired boy quickly laid down on his bed again at hearing it, shooting the young man who'd asked the question an apologetic look. Tugging the blankets up to his chin, he mumbled. "I'm sorry, doctor. I know I shouldn't be awake anymore since I'm being sick, but I can sleep…" He broke of mid-sentence, his vibrant green eyes giving the ´doctor´ an apologetic look.

The other young man laughed.

"There's no need to give me that look, Alphonse. It's only natural for you not to be sleepy at such an early time in the afternoon." Lively murky blue eyes scanned over his sick patient, trying to assert the situation. When the guilty expression on Alphonse´s face didn't fade, he heaved a heavy sigh.

Pushing the small wooden stool next to the side of the bed, he let himself fall on it, watching the young alchemist with a serious look. "You know…", he grumbled, "You're not exactly making this easy for me, _patient_ Alphonse Elric."

The young boy on the bed winced.

Noticing the motion, the expression of the city's youngest medic doctor in practise turned down a few notches, now expressing only a light exhaustion. The doctor's eyes (he was introduced as Emanuele Stephan of Light to the young blonde), however showed the emotion of something else, something deeper. They almost seemed to gleam in an soulless violet shade of colour.

Alphonse blinked.

The colour was back to a murky, mixed-up blue again; neither a coherent shade of real azure, but dotted with specks of grey, green and even some minimal lines of an eerie golden colour. And a faint lavender.

Alphonse blinked again.

Why had he never noticed that single lavender patch that sat in the right corner of the man's left eye? He usually wasn't that unobservant and doctor Stephan (he'd told Al that he preferred that name the first time they met – doctor of Light would make him sound like some type of old man) was the one person he'd most and close distance ever since that ill-fortuned try of alchemising.

Despite his young age – Stephan could hardly be older than twenty, if not even a bit younger than that- the young medic had taken care of Alphonse greatly, preventing the fever that had rattled the young teen from spreading out and evolving into something greater. All in all, Alphonse could only be grateful for Stephan's presence and the great aid he'd proved to be.

Still, there was this feeling of something else that held the young, blond alchemist just couldn't shake off.

No matter what he told himself, Alphonse just simply _knew_ that he'd met the young man already before.

But that was impossible.

Alphonse Elric had lost his complete memories from the time between the day they tried to reanimate their mother up to when his body was restored back from the confines of a metal armor six years later. He knew that he'd never met Stephan in the time when he and his brother were children. So the idea of having met him _after_ the failed transfiguration was almost overly present. But Stephan never recognized him.

"…-ing wrong? Al, are you even listening?!"

The last, in a raised voice asked question tore the young boy out of his considerations. Jerking up slightly, Alphonse quickly shot the young doctor another apologetic look.

"Ah?! I´m sorry… My thoughts were drifting off…"

"I noticed that.", the dry answer came .

Alphonse made a desperate attempt to save himself with an even more pitiecal look. It didn't help. Where anybody else (even his elsewise so stubborn and headstrong brother Edward) had long by craved in under those pleading eyes, Stephan's blue ones only met them coldly, expressing clearly their displeasure.

The young doctor didn't like to be ignored. If there was one thing that Alphonse noticed immediately, then that fact. The black-haired male absolutely hated it being cast aside for anybody or –thing else and may it be just so briefly.

_He hated to be ignored. Nothing angered him more then getting cast aside or being replaced by somebody new. _

_He hated it!_

Alphonse blinked again, shocked. Staring at the doctor's face, he realized that he didn't see it but somebody completely else's. _Raving mad, cruel violet eyes that had lost every human aspect, a broad smirk, dismissing all emotions aside from pain and rage…._ _The face that bore so much resemblance to his older brother's, yet were so completely WRONG_….

A creature that was eternally caught in the water-thin state separating between the living and the dead…

Alphonse felt his body start shaking, the sweat against his skin suddenly turning ice cold. All the colour had vanished from his face.

"…Alphonse?"

Seeing the boy's sudden strange turn in behaviour and visible getting alarmed by his sudden paleness, Stephan at once dropped the act of pouting insultedness. Recovering his place next to the six boy's bed, he put a probing palm to the blonde's forehead. Not detecting any change for the worse, Stephan's handsome face pulled into a frown.

"Alphonse?" he asked the shivering boy in front of him. "Is there anything wrong? Al? I can´t find anything. You need to tell me what's wrong, so that I can try to make it better…" Alphonse heard the soft, gently probing voice barely. Pictures were dancing in front of his eyes, scenes of cruel fights against inhuman enemies.

One picture was especially prominent.

His brother, locked with his murderous enemy in the final moves of their battle, they both dy_ing_…

A strong hand gripped Alphonse´s arm, jolting him out of the rage of the picture's assault. Shaking it off, Alphonse turned his head and got a good look of the one who'd grabbed him.

The face out of his vision's nightmare leered right back at him.

"ENVY!!!"

Letting out a coarse scream, the sick young alchemist found himself the strength and pushed the long-by forgotten fiend away from him with a rough shove. Unexpectedly, the vengeful homunculus didn't catch itself, but instead awkwardly went down with a muffled ´oof´.

Surprised, Alphonse blinked.

The shape in front of his eyes changed. Vicious, life-denying violet eyes changed their colour back to murky grey-blue ones that were shining with knowledge and a sprinkle of inner mirth and the sadistic leer switched into a expression of alerted concern. The hair was still long and of a shiny black quality, but it was now a lot less messy and hold together by a sloppily made braid. Doctor Stephan blinked at him.

"What?"

Alphonse felt a sudden, vicious blush creep over his cheeks as he realized what he'd done. Stuttering incoherent excuses he quickly moved to help his fallen caretaker up from the floor again. Waving his excuses and outstretched hand off, Stephan summoned a wry grin on his face.

"Stay where you are. You're the sick one here, it should be _me_ trying to help _you_ getting to your feet." Hauling himself up again alone, he winced a little, rubbing his sore hip the fall had earned him. Trying to stifle a little moan, the doctor's features twitched immediately into a grin again as he noticed Alphonse´s worried expression. "I must be a better doctor than I myself thought, when my patients are getting that healthy again that quickly." He grinned, to show the blond alchemist that he didn't mean that words too serious.

Alphonse still blushed. "G-Gomen, I don't know what I were thinking… There were those memories and then…suddenly…I- I'm sorry for what I did." He broke off lamely, fully knowing that the other wouldn't be able to understand what'd happened anyway. Just very few people possessed full knowledge of what'd happened to the famous Fullmetal Alchemist.

"I didn't know in that moment that it was you. …I saw somebody different." Alphonse´s gentle green eyes filled with sadness as he realized that he didn't even know _who_ it was whose face had elicited such a strong reaction from him. Stephan's face turned gentle. Putting a comradely hand to the back of the younger boy's shoulder, he gently asked. "It was somebody from our memories, wasn't it?" Alphonse nodded.

The young doctor heaved a minimal little sigh. He'd been told that the boy missed a good part of his memories and that most of them hadn't been too easy either. Brushing some stubborn strands that had been slipping into his face away, he gave the young Elric´s shoulder a little squeeze.

"Is it giving you any hint of how can get your brother back?"

"No…"

"Then forget it."

"-?"

More feeling then seeing Alphonse´s questioning look, Stephan started massaging his tensed shoulders. "Just forget it", he explained. "When it's a painful memory that won't do you any good in any way, then forget it." He paused for a moment, before he continued. "The past is the past. –what happened, happened. There's no chance of any of us for changing that. We can only learn from it and go on." Al´s shoulders twitched lightly at that.

"I know that…" He stated mournfully. Then, at once, he tore away from Stephan's touch almost violently. "But nii-sama! - Nii-sama´s still alive! He's there, at the other side of the gate and he's trying to come back to me! I _need_ to try and help him! I just have too!! … You probably don't understand, though." The last sentence was said in a tired, exhausted voice, filled with sadness. The young doctor had lowered his face at the begin of Alphonse´s outburst, so that all of his expressing was now hidden beneath his fringes and their shadows.

For a moment silence reigned the room.

Then, with a low creak of the mattress, Stephan left his place and slowly wandered over to gaze out of the room's only window, shadows still hiding his face. Finally, with a low, lifeless voice that barely still sounded like him, he asked. "You like your brother very much, don't you Alphonse?"

Alphonse nodded rigorously his head.

"Of course I do!"

Stephan didn't answer to that.

Again, silence stretched over the room. After a long pause, Alphonse finally found himself saying.

" You also have lost somebody, you care about very much, Doctor Stephan?"

The figure against the window grinned. The strange light that was coming from the outside was bathing the lower half of his usually handsome, youthful face with a pale unnatural light, morphing what should be a wistful little grin into a sadistic, broad sneer that lacked any hint friendliness. Alphonse shivered.

"My father… The person I want to meet most again is my father."

Alphonse smiled lightly. Obliviously his eyes were only playing a practical joke to him.

"You must like him very much."

"Like?" Something in the doctor's voice cracked. "I don't like him at all. I hate the goddamn bastard. He just took his stupid studies and left us all to our fates… Only I survived. I still need to tell him how much I hate him and that all what happened wouldn't have had to if he'd stayed." Noticing Alphonse´s shocked silence, the black-haired man broke off. His eyes still stared unmoved out of the window. Alphonse could only imagine what he was seeing.

Giving himself a visible push, Stephan finally pulled away from the sight of the window and what his own memories held and refocused back to his current and only patient. "I'm sorry about that. I didn't mean to…" He sighed. "I'm not a very good doctor, am I? A doctor's supposed to make patients better, not drag them down with his own bad experiences…"

"Ah! Not at all!" Stephan's smiled wistfully at Alphonse´s hurried shout. "You're nice, Alphonse, but I'm only stating the truth. There's still much for me to learn in my profession." The young boy gave the older male a funny look. There was nothing wrong with his words, but the way how he'd said it… It didn't seem right. Noticing something gold glitter around Stephan's neck, he decided to direct his concern to it instead of his ominous bad feelings.

"Doctor, what's that?"

Stephan blinked. "What's what?"

"That." Alphonse pointed to where he'd momentarily seen the flash of precious metal around the doctor's neck. "That necklace."

For a moment Stephan's blue-grey eyes stared at him in surprise, then he smiled in his same, uniquely way. "That? That's a keepsake of my father." He smirked lightly. "You know, my father was an expert in the profession of his, and he was always pushing himself to get even further… At the cost of the time with his family." Darkness flickered over those blue-grey eyes and for a moment, a single moment, the violet patch in them seemed to widen while the round form of the pupils were drawing into demonic slanted streaks. The next second, the moment was gone, and Stephan's eyes were normally human again.

"When I saw father the last time, he was just about to be crossing a very important gate in his path. I tried to follow him." "And? Did you manage it?" The dark-haired male almost laughed out loud at the young alchemist's curious tone. Like a little kid that was eager to hear an exciting story, he thought. But this wasn't a story, and if, then definitely none of those mushy nice fairy-tale type ones. He didn't voice any of those thoughts, though.

"I did make it. However-" He paused, just long enough to ensure having Alphonse´s unshared attention. "It didn't work the right way. What had been like a gate for my father was nothing like a double-sided, fake mirror to me. He went through and reached the other side to realize his goals. I. I went through it only to realize that it had lead me to the very point I had been starting from." He grinned. "Metaphysically spoken, of course. In short, at some point I simply realized that I couldn't waste my whole life with hunting after somebody like him. It´d be useless and an utter waste of time no less."

"So that necklace I saw-"

"Is the only memory of my family and him that I still have. Yes"

Pulling the intricate necklace out from under his clothes,, Stephan showed it to the awed Alphonse. The necklace in itself consisted only of a delicately-threaded golden wire that encircled the main piece, a flawless cut ruby that almost had the size of a normal man's pinkie finger. The stone itself was shining with an inner fire that made it look as if it were alive. It's red facades looked more like the colour of blood than a normal red.

Alphonse gaped in awe. Although definitely valuable, it in itself wasn't all that great. It was the over-all effect that gave it its glamour. "That colour…" It looks like crystallized blood was what he wanted to say, but he couldn't bring the words out. They could be upsetting Stephan, after all it was a keepsake.

Noticing the boy's look, Stephan chuckled lightly. "Like liquid blood, don't you think? I always thought that it looked like some immortal creatures blood…" He trailed off, giving Alphonse a strange look.

It was as if he was waiting for something.

As the young blond boy's face remained blank, the young doctor relaxed again. Summoning a chiding expression onto his face, he gently pushed Alphonse back to lay on his bed, letting the necklace with the mysterious stone-pendant vanish again in the process. He smiled.

"Enough talked for today. You're still sick, Alphonse, and you need your rest. We can continue that talk when you're fully recovered. What you need now to do is to sleep."

Despite not being any more tired than in the beginning, Alphonse let the young physician tuck him in without voicing the slightest of protest. The many, strange and at least partially eerie event of the evening (and yes, it had become evening in the time they had been talking) were taking up much to much of his head that he could still find the determination he needed to protest against being threatened like a little kid. It was okay that the doctor was willing to call it a night. He needed to think.

Stephan's presence made that eerily difficult.

When the young doctor was about to be leaving the room, Alphonse remembered a last question that didn't leave him alone.

"Stephan?"

Already holding the doorknob in his hand, the young man turned around.

"Yes?"

"I have a last question for today…" A little smile formed on Stephan's lips.

"And that'd be?"

"That necklace – what is it called?"

"What makes you think that it has any particular name?" Alphonse´s face turned serious at the question.

"It's extraordinary. I can feel that. What is it called?"

Stephan still smiled. However, the expression suddenly lacked any hint of gentle emotion but was only a twisted mock version of the real thing. It was the same expression with which the devil might be regarding a for forgiveness pleading sinner.

"It's the Philosophers Stone."

With a sadistic little laugh, he left the room.

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With a fleeting smirk, he turned around and left the room. That day, Alphonse would still stare for a very long, long time at the closed door doctor Stephan had left through. The black-haired male laughed lowly at that thought, thought he'd have it preferred to do more to the little boy than only confuse him.

But giving into his urges now wouldn't do him any good. An electric surge of power ripped through the air and where once had been a youthful looking, aspiring doctor was now somebody completely else.

Envy never faltered in his steps.

In all the time that had followed Edward's and his father's , Hohenheim´s, change through the gate, things hadn't changed for Envy at all.

The shapeshifter still had no recollections of his existence before being what he was now. No new hints regarding his true gender, name or just his appearance had appeared. The homunculus was still the same.

Envy was still a ´Monster´.

He didn't mind that. He only hated the fact that the gate had repelled him, spitting him out just where he'd begun, the place their last critical show-down with the army and the Elrics had begun. Only that he was too late and the cleaning up was already in the progress. All his efforts to reach Hohenheim had been in vain.

It hadn't been any further difficult for Envy to prevent being noticed.

Making his way to the nearest open window, Envy quickly jumped outside, making his way to the little inn's rooftop without any major problems. He smirked at the foolish humans. Should they think themselves as being the top of creation, he didn't care! He only cared about his father and how it would be best to gain revenge on him.

The Philosophers Stone – the _real_ one- slapped against his chest.

Lifting it to the height of his face, Envy watched it through narrowed eyes. The Philosophers Stone… It had amazingly formed out off all the fake ones he'd had assimilated when he'd been spit out of the gate. The homunculus wasn't dependant on anything to ensure his unnatural life anymore, too. He still kept it.

The Philosophers Stone was the second insurance he had to meet his ´beloved´ father again. That and his constant closeness to Alphonse Elric. Envy didn't doubt a second that sooner or later one of the two Elric brothers would find a way to cross the gate anew and would reunite. Envy even less doubted that Hohenheim would come and save his ´real´ sons when the time had come.

The artificial created human being smirked.

And when Hohenheim came… he would finally get his revenge.

Laughing silently to himself, the homunculus named Envy changed another time it's shape before vanishing swiftly in the night's darkness.

Tomorrow, the very confused Alphonse Elric would encounter a new friend during his attempt of searching for the vanished doctor Stephan…_- And when Edward and his father would finally return from the other side of the gate, Envy would waiting for them._

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Done! It´s finished. You may flame my head off now. Eh… please don´t. Reviews and constructive comments are more than welcome, just no total unreasoned flames. Anyway, this is my first attempt at Hagaren and I´d like to know what you think of it. Also, if this finds enough interest, if I should ever continue this or not. (Al and Ed all the time trying to get back together again and Envy constantly butting in sounds like an interesting story idea…) 

Meh. Well. -.-;

THANK YOU FOR READING THIS FAR!!


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